


Theatrics

by obscure_affection



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Dark!Molly, DysFUNctional families, F/M, Family Conflict, M/M, Neglect, abuse of animals, disturbing images, the sort of disturbing you'd expect of dark!molly and jim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-08
Updated: 2013-01-08
Packaged: 2017-11-24 04:30:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/630437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obscure_affection/pseuds/obscure_affection
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Molly knows the boy next door isn't imaginary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Theatrics

Molly knows the boy next door isn’t imaginary.   
  
Sometimes she will see his face in the window, and she’ll cry for someone to look before he vanishes. Nobody is fast enough. Nobody but her sees. His pale face vanishes into the darkness again and again. Sometimes Molly feels like the whole world is blind.  
  
‘It’s sweet you have an imaginary friend,’ they say, smiling at her.   
  
Molly Hooper has rosy cheeks, pale clever fingers and large brown eyes.  
  
Nothing about her is sweet.   
  
She takes to sitting in the yard, by the wooden fence. It’s too high to climb over so she just sits by it, waiting for the moment. To pass the time she leaves sugar out for the ants. Once they have swarmed around it she kills them, pressing her fingers into their tiny bodies over and over.  
  
Dead ants smell like battery acid.  
  
‘Do you want something bigger?’  
  
The boy is sitting on the other side of the fence. His eyes are huge, and his limbs are as pale and thin as his face. A spider-child, dirty and swift on his toes.  
  
‘Bigger?’  
  
‘I can catch birds. For you. Instead of the ants. If you like.’  
  
He gives her a little smile. His eyes a hungry, but the smile is shy. Molly likes that. She likes it when people can show you two things at once, like a magic trick.  
  
‘Prove it then, catch me a bird.’  
  
Delighted, he begins to stand, but Molly reaches out and grabs him first. Her hand (though small) can almost wrap entirely around his leg. For a moment they are suspended in time; the dirty eager boy and the girl with the dead ants.  
  
‘What’s your name?’  
  
‘Jim Moriarty.’  
  
She lets him go.  
  
It was no idle boast, the bird catching. Fascinated, she watches him climb the tree in his yard. The leaves are dark and glossy, disguising his thin limbs among the branches. He hangs in the tree, hands and feet working to hold him in place. A birds nest sits below him.  
  
They wait.  
  
And wait.  
  
Molly could go inside, she could start killing ants again, she could do anything to pass the time. She won’t though. She will sit silent and wait with him. Already she likes Jim Moriarty. The name sounds good inside her, like an exotic poison.  
  
A robin flies to its nest.  
  
It will never see what kills it.   
  
All it knows is that one moment, it’s gliding up through branches towards the eggs, and the next something brittle and strong is blinding it, pulling its head back-  
Jim climbs down the tree using his hands and feet. The bird is in his mouth, wings hanging from his lips.  
  
Flushed with his success, he presents the bird to Molly.   
  
In silence, they admire it. Tiny legs ending in tiny claws. The rounded feathery chest still warm to the touch. Beak is open, gaping at them, the eyes utterly blank. Slowly, Molly pulls its wings open, looking at the shape of them. It’s life was so tiny that even now the container of it could fit in the palm of her fist. Body, container, suitcase.  
  
Suitcase; something to unpack.  
  
‘I want to unpack it,’ she says to Jim, and he understands.  
  
‘Wait.’  
  
He rushes into the house, the metal door clanging and bouncing behind him. She is alone with the bird for a whole minute, and spends that time looking at the bone protruding from its neck. She is unspeakably glad he didn’t crush it, didn’t ruin the interior of it.  
  
Jim returns, this time with a small, sharp looking knife. She has never seen a knife like it, all they have in the kitchen are butter knives. This one has a personality, a whisper to it the moment it touches her skin.  
  
The light is painted as they work. Blue of the sky shaded with grey, the air darkening, then a bloody sunset daubed onto the wide canvass above them. As the colours rearrange, they get blood under their fingernails and grin at each other when they realise.    
  
He pulls out bones from flesh, and she gazes at the now redundant veins. Neither of them know the names of all the organs they find, but they both recognise the heart.  
It’s tiny.  
  
—-  
  
Molly leaves her bedroom curtains open at night. The shouting next door becomes so loud, and the sound of crashing so impossible to ignore, that she gives up and starts listening.   
  
The man has a low booming voice, often slurred. The mother sounds hysterical, often breaking into fits of laughter. Never once does she hear Jim shout at them, or cry.  
Dirty fingers cling to her window sill. He slaps the glass with an open palm, not daring to knock loudly. Smiling, Molly pulls the window open and watches Jim collapse onto her bedroom floor.  
  
‘You have toys,’ he says, looking at the three toy rabbits sitting on her shelf.   
  
‘I don’t like them.’ Molly confesses. ‘I think they're boring.’  
  
Jim doesn’t say anything because he understands about boring. They sit on her bed and leave the window open. Without the glass barrier, his parents voices are shockingly loud. His feet are making her sheets dirty but Molly doesn’t really mind much about being clean.  
  
‘I’m going to kill them one day,’ he confides, not looking at her. His eyes (as big and brown as hers) are dreamy and fixed on his own house, on his parents shouting.  
‘We’ll run away together. Ok?’  
  
‘Ok.’  
  
—-  
  
He does kill them, but it takes him a long time to work out how.   
  
Molly thinks he should make it look like a fight that went too far. Nobody will suspect murder. A poor abusive couple who neglected their house and only son would hardly be top of the list for police investigation. Everyone on the street will confirm the fact they fight, loudly and constantly. Accidents happen.  
  
Jim has other ideas.  
  
‘I want them to know it was me,’ he says, pacing Mollys bedroom. ‘I want them to realise what’s happening. But how? Without being caught?’  
  
The years have changed Jim.  
  
Changed them both, really, but his change is more obvious.  
  
He is no longer so thin as to be mistaken for a skeleton in the wrong light. Puberty gave him strong lean muscle and softer skin. Now he is almost painfully clean, his teeth blinding white and his nails manicured. Molly is sure he never gets dandruff, never gets pimples.  
  
Molly herself is outwardly the same as ever. Large brown eyes, hesitant hands, glossy dark hair. She is called pretty, small, sweet, darling, mouse, baby, doe. In order to maintain this façade, she has taken to wearing baggy jumpers and long skirts. In reality, Molly has four dead cats under the house, each one in a different state of decomposition.  
  
‘We’ll think of something. Something you’ll like,’ she promises Jim.  
  
‘If you can think of something, I’ll let you inflict the injuries yourself.’  
  
This is how Jim says thankyou. It’s how the friendship, though nobody at the crumbling public school knows about their friendship. She sits with a few dull girls and he wags half his classes.    
  
Once free of the teachers and students (boring, predictable, easy to manipulate, easy to scare, stupid, unoriginal) they hide out in Mollys room and plan the perfect murder.  
  
Or, it would be perfect if only Jim wasn’t so dramatic.  
  
‘You could just push her down the stairs and make it look like she pulled him down after her,’ Molly says, for the fifth time.  
  
‘No! It has to be…’ Jim closes his eyes. His school shirt is rumpled, and his dark hair messy. ‘It has to be beautiful.’  
  
‘This’d be so much easier if you weren’t so dramatic.’   
  
Jim shrugs. He thinks she lacks imagination (she doesn’t) she thinks he lacks sense (he does) but he’ll have his way in the end (most of the time) just because she likes to watch him act it out. Do what he does best.  
  
‘I have it.’  
  
Molly smiles, and listens carefully as the plan is explained out to her. Clever, a little dramatic, violent, utterly Jim and utterly perfect.  
  
‘You like it,’ he says, finishing his monologue and looking at her bright eyes.  
  
‘Love it. Can I help with the scratch marks and fractures?’  
  
‘Promise.’  
  
—-  
  
‘I can’t fucking believe you. I thought you were… interesting. Obviously, I was wrong.’  
  
Jim is a man now, though only just. He likes to grow stubble just to prove he can, then shaves it off because it annoys him. Likewise, Molly buys herself erotic lingerie from sex shops, then throws it out after one use.  
  
This is the worst fight they’ve ever had.  
  
‘I’m not saying I won’t be part of your world, Moriarty,’ she snaps, using his public name, his calling card. ‘I will be. But I want to do it from London, and I want this job.’  
It isn’t such a big ask, is it? She doesn’t want to go to Russia, Germany, America, just to make ‘friends’ with powerful people who’d kill her if they could think up a good enough reason to. It sounds like the extravagant kind of thing Jim has always loved, and she has always been slightly bored by.  
  
World domination? Cliché, Jim.     
  
‘It won’t be the same without you,’ Jim says, softly. It isn’t a whisper or a beg, just a softly stated fact. In all their years together, they’ve never been apart long. Now, in his expensive suit, Jim is going to go with or without her.  
  
Well, without her.  
  
‘I’ll come back different,’ he continues. ‘I might come back and not know you.’  
  
‘You might not come back at all.’  
  
‘So come with me.’  
  
‘No.’  
  
Jim pulls the gun out of his pocket. A slim, silver thing, old fashioned and impractical. Beautiful, undoubtedly still deadly, but the exact kind of thing Molly considers a waste of money. Any gun can kill.  
  
He puts the gun to her chest, between her breasts. Neither of them look away from each other, brown eyes searching brown eyes. Slowly, she puts her hand under the gun and lifts it to her lips, kissing the tip of the cold silver metal.  
  
Jim exhales, eyes wide.  
  
‘Go, Jim. Get the world to dance for you. I’ll still be here when you get back.’  
  
‘Promise not to get boring while I’m gone?’  
  
‘I could never get boring.’  
  
Obviously Jim agrees, because he leaves without killing her.  
  
—-  
  
Jim had become obsessed with domination, but not in the greedy way. It wasn’t about power, or money, or anything quite so simple as that. It was still a cliché to want the world in such excess, Molly thought, but it truly wasn’t as simple as world domination.  
  
He wanted to make the world dance for him, keep him entertained. Keep him from being bored. Improve it and improve it and improve it, making the dance ever more intricate and deadly.   
  
Like a child building a sandcastle, tower upon tower until it dominates the beach.  
  
Jim wanted to make the world into a sandcastle so interesting that he didn’t want to kick it down afterwards.  
  
Molly, though.  
  
She never quite got past the idea that things existed within people. Hearts, lungs, disease, layers of skin and muscle and fat. A complex combination of bones, and the brain.  
  
The brain.  
  
Somehow the pink tangled mass, wet and sensitive to the lightest touch, was the host for thought, idea, action, invention, murder, sentiment, pain. She had no desire to go to Russia, because all bodies are the same on the inside.  
  
Unlike Jim, she didn’t think she wanted to expand outward. Molly liked the idea of going inward, into the bile and shit and infinite beauty of connecting veins.   
  
Both of them strove for perfection.  
  
—-  
  
It was lonely.  
  
She brought a cat, and didn’t kill it. The interior of a cat was no mystery to her, she’d taken them apart more times than she could remember, but she’d never had one as a pet before.  
  
It was cute, in a sickening kind of way. Sometimes it wanted to cuddle with her, and other times it seemed to hate her. Naturally it was utterly dependant on her, and sometimes Molly deprived it of food and water to see how long it’d last.  
  
Toby the cat, her one companion now Jim was gone.  
  
Thankfully, she had the work.  
  
Many of the other students had been sickened by dead bodies at first, had taken time to adapt. They didn’t know how to look into lifeless eyes. Realising she would have to fit in, Molly pretended.  
  
At least while other people were watching.  
  
Alone, she only just stopped herself from singing. If only she could take the bodies home with her! She would skin them, and hang the skin up on her walls for examination. Slice open the eyes, letting her scalpel divide the different shades of colour.  
  
Often Jim texted her, or sent her postcards. He made sure to emphasize the luxury and wealth that surrounded him wherever he went. Clearly his influence was growing, his name becoming notorious. Jim knew Molly cared about money and fame even less than him, but nevertheless she was glad to know that he was doing well, was alive, was still thinking of her.  
  
‘Got a boyfriend?’   
  
‘You should get out more often, spend more time with the living.’  
  
‘Such a good little worker Molly. Such steady hands.’  
  
No. No. Thanks, sir.  
  
She didn’t want a relationship. It was easy enough to fuck people, to pull them close and examine their arousal. In a kind of abstract way she liked it; the feeling of power, watching the body chemistry react to her.  
  
Love? Relationships?  
  
She would rather a quick fuck once every few months, with some nameless stranger, and spend the reminder of her time with the dead, un-peeling the mystery of departed life.  
  
—-  
  
 _I have a job for you. His name is Hope. Up for some fun, Molly darling? JM_  
  
 _Always. Give me the details. MH_  
  
 _Jefferson Hope, cabbie, divorced, loves his kids. Our pills. JM_  
  
 _Easy. MH_  
  
It was easy, too. Hope thought that he was a proper genius, that he was a cruel and twisted man with fate on his side. The extent of his own delusion was almost alarming…  
  
A proper genius would not risk his own life, not for a few civilian deaths. If he were a proper genius he’d keep the money, forget the children who’d no doubt grow up normal and hate him for his lack of ethics.   
  
She has him in the palm of her hand after five minutes, and before long he has made three wonderful hits. In reality she has almost forgotten about him, until Sherlock Holmes fucks it all up.  
  
  
She and Jim had known about Sherlock for years. Ever since they’d gotten rid of Carl together. It’d been Mollys idea to use the poison in the cream, but Jim had gotten to choose the victim. Carl was a bully, too big and strong for Jim to fight off. He had to go, and go he did.  
  
It’d been wonderful.  
  
The chaos, people crying, the usually so composed and would-be powerful teachers pale with shock. Everything had crumbled. Order had been smashed and Jim had loved it, the death of his tormentor aiding the joy he felt at the destruction of unity.  
  
They’d fought over the shoes, but in the end she kept them.  
  
A few weeks later they’d heard about Sherlock Holmes.  
  
He kept arriving at the school. Pale like Jim, with sharp blue-green eyes and mad black curls. It was immediately obvious that he was smart, far smarter than the police and the teachers. He broke into the school and searched for the shoes, before he started on Carls friends, asking if they’d seen anything odd.   
  
‘He knows something,’ Molly had mentioned.  
  
‘How could he?’ Jim had snapped, sharpening a knife. ‘It was perfect. We did nothing wrong. He won’t find shit.’  
  
‘I know he won’t find shit. He’ll never prove anything. But he still knows.’  
  
Jim had ignored her and Molly had let the matter rest.  
  
So seeing Sherlock Holmes again so many years later had been quite a shock. He didn’t remember her. He looked at her clothes, the cat hair, her obvious lack of close friends and boyfriends. In short, he saw the same Molly Hooper everybody else did, and it made her happy. She’d fooled him.  
  
And then…  
  
She couldn’t give Hope her own name. It was too risky, and the name Moriarty had a reputation behind it. So she’d given him the name Moriarty, and in Hopes dying moments he’d given the name to Sherlock.  
  
‘Do you remember Sherlock Holmes?’  
  
‘No. Give me a moment.’  
  
Molly waited whilst Jim thought. Even though he was miles away she could almost hear his brain ticking. No doubt he would be tapping his fingers against his bottom lip, a habit of his.  
  
‘Carl. The guy who knew about Carl.’  
  
‘Yeah, him. He works in London, and I see him around sometimes. He thinks I’m a boring single woman with a crush on him. But he found out about Hope. Got evidence, got Hope killed, and got your name.’  
  
A howl of rage exploded in her ear. It lasted for a few seconds, then silence fell. She waited, knowing better than to say anything. When Jim spoke at last his voice was soft, almost gentle.  
  
‘How did Hope die and how did Holmes get my name?’  
  
‘Sherlock has this assistant, an ex-army doctor. I don’t know his name yet. He shot Hope in the chest when he became a threat to Sherlock. But he was still alive, and Sherlock tortured him until he got your name.’  
  
Jim made a sound that could almost be called orgasmic.  
  
‘This could be fun, Molly. Do you think?’  
  
‘I do think.’  
  
‘I’ll be in London in a few weeks.’

—-  
  
When Jim saw the oddly attractive man Sherlock had become, he was immediately drawn to him. They were both pale men with dark hair and volatile eyes. Molly had a very bad feeling about the whole thing, but she tried to ignore it.  
  
Jim had always loved theatrics.    
  
She’d always known it would be the death of him.   
  
The only reason he was still alive was because he was usually smarter than the people he fought, but this time… Sherlock was good. Never lucky and like them, almost always right.  
  
‘Not always right, Molly. He’s wrong about you.’  
  
They were sitting on her bed, like they had in the old days. Jim was smoking, and sometimes Molly took a drag. In the dark the cream and pink of her room was nothing but black and silver outlines.  
  
‘I just worry about you.’   
  
‘Not getting sentimental, are we Hooper?’  
  
She snatched the cigarette from him and pressed the burning tip to his wrist. He made no noise, just watched his skin retract and bubble. It was like they were children again, marvelling at the decay of animal flesh.  
  
He kissed her on the cheek, and she let her head rest on his shoulder. Smoke faded into the air around them.  
  
‘What do we do about Sherlock Holmes?’ Jim whispered to the darkness.  
  
—-  
  
It was all Jims idea.   
  
Well, not the pool, that had been Sherlock. They were made for each other, Molly thought wryly, both of them so damn dramatic. Jim wore a good suit and didn’t bother bringing a gun. Why would he bother himself with guns when he had snipers and John Watson?  
  
Sherlock brought a gun.  
  
Molly watched the whole thing unfold from the roof. She was sitting by a man called Sebastian Moran. He was tanned from the sun, had a very straight nose and dark eyes. In short, he had received a dishonourable discharge from the army and looked like a man who hit people for fun.  
  
‘So. You’re her. Molly Hooper.’  
  
‘And you’re him. Sebastian Moron.’  
  
Sebastian snorted quietly, yet the movement never dislodged the rifle in his arms. He was obviously a man who’d shoot straight in his sleep.  
  
‘You remind me of him. Sister?’  
  
‘Childhood friend. What about you… lover?’  
  
‘I wouldn’t call what he does loving.’  
  
They shared a grim smile. She’d never yet slept with Jim, but she imagined the experience would be far from soothing. In a companionable silence, they watched Jim flirt with a captivated Sherlock whilst John Watson panicked.   
  
‘Show off,’ they said in unison.  
  
—-  
  
The problem was that Sherlock Holmes lived, and whilst he lived, neither Molly nor Jim could work in total peace.  
  
‘You’re the Mycroft,’ said Jim.  
  
‘I’m what?’  
  
Jim had invited her for drinks and murder at an expensive hotel, and they were sipping wine on a rotating bed whilst pondering the future. The bed was a novelty, the kind of cheesy awful thing Jim loved. A slowly rotating satin bed. It was almost too much, Molly thought, almost.  
  
‘Well I’m Sherlock and you’re Mycroft.’  
  
‘Oh. So you’re the doomed-to-die young danger addict and I’m the dull but immortal normal-seeming iceman?’  
  
Jim beamed, raising his glass in a toast. His brown eyes were so unguarded now, and he was very much the delighted boy she’d met so many years ago. This happiness was a mask, as much as the psychopathic self was. She didn’t think anyone got to see him alone. That was the true Jim.  
  
‘You’re so immature, Jim.’  
  
‘But you love me for it.’  
  
‘You’re insufferable. I don’t know how Sebastian puts up with you.’  
  
‘Want to find out? I’m not against threesomes.’  
  
‘You’re not against anything.’  
  
‘True. Who shall we murder tonight?’  
  
Molly took another sip, feeling the bubbles rush to her head. It had been years since she’d been drunk, mostly because the only person she liked being drunk with was Jim. Years since she’d actually murdered, because Jim was the only person she wanted to murder with.  
  
‘The lady next door owes me money. I know you want to examine the human body as it lives… I thought while her husband searches for the money, you could begin your examination?’  
  
This was one of Mollys dearest wishes. Not to murder swiftly, but to take apart and put back together the body whilst living. It was almost a Frankenstein like desire, to see where the spark of life dwelt and play with it. Tickle it.  
  
‘Oh Jim. I don’t know how to thank you…’  
  
‘You will, someday.’  
  
Molly beamed, hands already itching to see the woman. She’d open up the chest like a jewellery box, slide her fingers into the heart, feel it beating around her finger… Open up the skin over her spine and trace the vertebrate.   
  
Watching her, Jim smiled a little lopsidedly.  
  
‘Come on, Hooper. Your patient awaits you.’  
  
—-  
  
The resolution to the Sherlock Holmes problem was, to Molly, very unsatisfactory. It was mad, would go wrong, it was too dramatic, Jim was asking too much, pushing his luck too far…  
  
‘Sherlock will jump, Molly. He is so sentimental about the few people he has that he won’t even think twice. Promise.’  
  
Sherlock has asked Molly to save his life, to help him fake his death. Of all the people he could have asked! She had said yes, Sherlock, I understand, Sherlock, but she had no intention to actually help. He would put his life in her hands, and he would die because of it. In the end, she would kill Sherlock Holmes, and not Jim. And Sherlock would never know. The irony of it made Jim shiver in delight; he loved a convoluted love story.  
  
‘What if something does go wrong? What then?’  
  
Jim turned to her, and extinguished his cigarette before kissing her. It was a slow wet kiss that made her shake with fear. Something would go wrong. This was Jim saying goodbye. An ending.  
  
‘Jim…’  
  
‘Don’t. Let me. You don’t know what it is to be me, Molly, and I can’t… not without this. Just once.’  
  
Fear is burning right beside her arousal. She wants to scream at him, to make him see sense, to stop him from doing whatever stupid thing he was thinking of. Because he was planning something stupid, she was sure of it.  
  
But Jims lips were on her, his legs pulling her in so their hips ground together. Her nipples were hard, his teeth sharp on her neck, and his hands so slow over her sweaty skin.   
  
Not without this. Just once.  
  
  
Whilst on the roof, Jim called her. She answered, confused, because this wasn’t part of the plan.   
  
He didn’t speak to her, but played a song over his phone. Her blood ran cold, because suddenly she knew what he would do. What he must have been planning all alone. Doomed-to-die young danger addict? Jim would die now, and leave her and Sebastian to take care of his legacy. Bastard.  
  
’ _Ah Ah Ah Ah Stayin alive stayin alive_ … Staying alive! So boring, isn’t it? It’s just staying…’   
  
Jim hung up, and a few minutes later the genius boy who’d wanted the world to dance with him shot himself in the head. Clearly, the dance had come to an end for Jim, the curtains closing.   
  
She was numb, gone, nothing. White noise in her head. This is shock, she realised, the thing other people felt. Grief, the emotion she’d somehow avoided. Paralysed, Molly forgot to sabotage Sherlocks suicide.   
  
As Jim lay dead on the roof, Sherlock fell to his own death, and lived. He got to live, and Jim did not. Molly would inherit the legacy of her longest friend, would find herself working against Sherlock… and Sherlock would never know, not until the final moments, who he was fighting against.  
  
Neither of them had killed him. She’d failed Jim. And Sherlock would hunt her down.  
  
—-  
  
Molly and Sebastian were on a private jet, heading to one of the many cities Jim had under his control. Sebastian was quiet, and watching her with worry in his eyes. They’d hardly spoken to each other, both mute with shock and grief.   
  
Thanks to her, Sherlock Holmes was still alive and well, currently in hiding and preparing to take down the network of his nemesis.  
Little did he realise…  
  
When (as would happen eventually) Sherlock came face to face with her at last, she would be ready. Molly had saved his life once, but she would not make that mistake again.    
  
So she raised her wine glass to Sebastian, and they toasted the air.  
  
‘To Jim,’ she said, and drank. 


End file.
